SOURCE: “English Tragedy,” in Edinburgh Review, Vol. 38, No. LXXV, February, 1823, pp. 177-208.

In the history of a nation, the progress and vicissitudes of its Literature are but too frequently disregarded. The crowning of kings, and the winning of battles, are recorded with chronological accuracy, and the resources of the country are laid open. The eye of the reader is dazzled with the splendour of courts, and the array of armies: The rise and fall of parties—the trial and condemnation of state criminals—the alternations of power and disgrace, are explained to very weariness. But of the quiet conquests of learning, there is small account. The philosopher must live in his own page, the poet in his verse; for the national chronicles are almost mute regarding them. The historian's bloody catalogue is not made up of units; but deals only with great assemblages of men—armies, fleets, and senates: The king is the only ‘One’ included in the story; but of him, be he a cipher or a tyrant, we are told in a way to satisfy the most extravagant desires of loyalty.

There is in this, we think, an undue preponderance—a preference of show to substance—of might to right. There is at least as much importance to be attached to the acquisition of Paradise Lost, or Lear, as to the gaining of an ordinary victory. Accordingly, we, profiting by the historian's lapse, and in order to do those ingenious persons (the poets and philosophers) justice, assume the right of tracing, from time to time, their histories upon our pages, and of discussing, with something of historic candour, their good qualities and defects.

In contemplating the great scene of Literature, the Muses are, beyond doubt, one of the brightest groups; and, among them, those of the Drama stand out preeminent. To quit allegory—it comes more quickly home to the bosoms of men; it is linked more closely to their interests and desires, detailing matters of daily life, and treating, in almost colloquial phrase, of ordinary passions. It is as a double-sided mirror, wherein men see themselves reflected, with all their agreeable pomp and circumstance, but freed of that rough husk of vulgarity which might tempt them to quarrel with their likeness: while the sins of their fellows are stripped and made plain, and they themselves pourtrayed with unerring and tremendous fidelity.

Certainly dramatic poetry is more quick and decisive in its effects than poetry of any other kind; and this arises partly from its nature, and partly from the circumstances under which it is made public. In the imagination of a person visiting the theatre, there is a predisposition to receive strong impressions. The toil of the day is over, the spirits are exhilarated, and the nerves rendered susceptible by a consciousness of coming enjoyment. All the fences and guards that a man assumes in matters of business or controversy, are laid aside. Even the little caution with which he takes up a book (for we have now got a lurking notion that authors are not infallible) is forgotten: he casts off his care and his prudence, and sets both the past and future at defiance when he enters the limits of a theatre. It is impossible for a person unacquainted with dramatic representation, to understand the effect produced on a mixed mass of the people, when a striking sentiment is uttered by a popular actor. The conviction is instantaneous. Hundreds of stormy voices are awakened, the spirit of every individual is in arms, and a thousand faces are lighted up which a moment before seemed calm and powerless;—and this impression is not so transient as may be thought. It is carried home, and nursed till it ripens. It is a germ which blossoms out into patriotism, or runs up rank into prejudice or passion. It is intellectual property, honestly acquired; and yet debateable ground, on which disputes may arise, and battles are to be fought hereafter.

Men are often amused, and sometimes instructed, by books. But a tragedy is a great moral lesson, read to two senses at once; and the eye and the ear are both held in alliance to retain the impression which the actor has produced. A narrative poem is perhaps more tempting in its shape than a play, and may fix the attention more deeply in the closet; but it is addressed to a more limited class, and necessarily affects our sympathies less forcibly; for a Drama is an embodying of the present, while an Epic is only a shadow of the past. We listen, in one case, to a mere relation of facts; but, in the other, the ruin of centuries is swept away, and time annihilated, and we stand face to face with ‘grey Antiquity.’ We see and hear things which we thought had departed for ever; but they are (or seem to be) here again—in stature, in gesture, in habit, the same. We become as it were one of a crowd that has vanished; we mix with departed sages and heroes, and breathe the air of Athens, and Cressy, and Agincourt. Men who have been raised to the stars, and whom we have known but by the light of their renown, are made plain to our senses: they stand before us, flesh and blood like ourselves. We are apt to deny our sympathy to old events, when it is asked by the mere historian of the times; but, when the mimic scene is unfolded before us, we are hurried into the living tumult, without the power (or even wish) to resist.

Schlegel, in his acute and learned Lectures on ‘Dramatic Art and Literature,’ inquires, ‘what is Dramatic?' A definition is seldom an easy thing. Although we can understand what is called dramatic writing, it may nevertheless be difficult to define it correctly. It certainly does not consist merely in its shape of dialogue, because dialogue may be, and often is, essentially undramatic. Speeches may be shaped, and separated, and allotted, and they may be raised or lowered in expression, as the king, or the merchant, or the beggar, is presented, yet the hue of the author's mind shall pervade them all. Such characters are not dramatic: they have no verisimilitude: they are like puppets worked with wires, the mechanism of the brain, but little more. They may startle our admiration, or tease our curiosity, by the ingenuity of the workmanship; but we have no faith in them, and they stimulate us to nothing. In Shakespeare (but he stands in this, as in every thing else, alone), we never see the prejudice of the author peeping out and interfering,—a mistake and an anachronism in the scene. He is the only one who ever had strength enough to cast off the slough of his egotism, and courage enough to lay his vanities aside, and array with the pure light of an independent intellect, the most airy creations of the brain. Like the prince in the Arabian fiction, he leaves one shape for another and another, animating each and all by turns; not carrying the complexion or tone, or diseases of the first, into the body of the second; and yet superior even to that ingenious metempsychosist, whose original love, if we remember aright, remained unaltered through all the changes that he underwent in story.

It is assuredly difficult,—and argues more than common disinterestedness, to set aside, of our own accord, our right to be heard, and to become the organ and mouthpiece of a variety of men. To invest ourselves for a time with the prejudices, and even with the very speech of statesmen and soldiers, kings and counsellors, knaves, idiots, friars and the like, seems like a gratuitous vexation of the intellect; and yet it must be done. We must give up our privilege to dictate, and lose the opportunity of saying infinitely better things than the parties concerned would utter, if we wish for eminent success in the drama. This is offensive to our self-love; and the truth is, that a vain man can never be a good dramatist. He must forget himself before he can do justice to others. We have heard it insisted, that this is neither possible nor desirable. But that it is possible, Shakespeare is a brilliant testimony. And that it is desirable, is equally certain, and, we apprehend, not very difficult of proof. A character (king or peasant) must speak like himself, or like another person, or like no person whomsoever:—which style is the best, we leave to the understanding of the reader. It is true that, without much of that particular faculty which we are inclined to call ‘dramatic,’ some authors have contrived to pourtray one or two characters with success; but these have been generally mere beaux ideals,—mere copies or modifications of themselves. Indeed, we have found, on a strict scrutiny, that their opinions might always be seen darkening one character, and their animal spirits gilding another; and that, whether didactic, or disputatious, or jocose, the fluctuation of their own spirit has been manifest through all the shiftings and disguises of their tale.

Schlegel, in reply to his own question of ‘What is dramatic?’ says—that it does not consist merely in dialogue, but that it is necessary that such dialogue should operate a change in the minds of the persons represented. If by this he means, that the character itself should be wrought upon and change, we think that this may be desirable; but the nature of the drama is a thing different from the result which it ought to arrive at. This assertion of Schlegel is therefore almost like saying, that argument is not sound (or rather that it is not argument at all) unless it shall produce conviction. In our own literature, at least, it is certain that we often find the personages at the end of the play in precisely the same state of mind as at the commencement. We make a play a succession and change of events, and not a change of sentiment. The sentiment of the hearer is indeed, if possible, to be wrought upon, but not necessarily that of any one character of the drama. The character, in fact, is frequently developed in the first scene, and we have nothing afterwards to learn except as to what accidents befall it. If the German critic means to say (for he is not very clear), that the tone of the several speeches in a play should be dependent on each other—that the first should give rise to the second, the second to the third, and so on, we entirely agree with him: For the bright spirit of dialogue can only be struck out by collision; and if the speech, the answer, and the replication, were mere independent and insulated sayings, each character would utter a series of monologues, and no more.

Shakespeare (as in the case of Macbeth and others) sometimes makes his tragedy an absolute piece of biography, and allows his characters to unfold themselves gradually, act by act: he does not, in truth, often bring forward a ready-made villain, whom we may know at a glance; but we have a map of the march and progress of crime or passion through the human heart: our sympathies are not assaulted or taken by surprise, but we move forward, step by step, with the hero of the story, until he perishes before our eyes. This is undoubtedly the perfection of the drama; but it exists in its weakness as well as in its strength; and even in Shakespeare, Iago is much the same person in the fifth act as he is in the first scene, and Richard undergoes little, if any, alteration.

If we were driven to a definition, we should say, that a good drama is—‘A story told by action and dialogue, where the spirit and style of the speeches allotted to each character are well distinguished from the others, and are true to that particular character and to Nature.’ It must involve a story (or event), or it will not have the strength and stature of a drama; for that is not a collection of scenes loosely hung together without object, but a gradual detail of one or more facts in a regular and natural way. It must have action, or it cannot be fit for representation; and dialogue, or it would be but narration. The speeches must possess character and distinction, without which, a play would be monotonous, and like the voice of a single instrument breathed through different tubes of one diameter: and that those speeches should be true to the characters to which they are assigned, and (as a consequence) to Nature, must be presumed, until we can show that Nature is wrong, or can find a brighter model to imitate.

The earliest dramatic amusements of modern times (they were common to Italy, and Spain, and England), were of a religious nature, and with us passed under the name of ‘Mysteries.’ In these, which were stories taken from the Bible and Testament, the characters were sustained by monks, or boys attached to ecclesiastical establishments; and, indeed, the literary part of the Mysteries (such as it is) must have sprung from the same source.

Much discussion has occurred among our industrious and inquisitive brethren in learning, as to whether our Drama is of foreign or English growth. Something plausible may no doubt be urged on each side of the question; but we must rest on circumstantial proof at last: And, after all, the discovery would scarcely compensate for the pains that must be bestowed on the inquiry; for the subject itself is not very important to the interests even of the Drama.

Some derive our dramatic literature at once from the tragedies of the ancient Greeks; some from the comparatively modern entertainments which the Jews and early Christians were accustomed to exhibit at Constantinople (Byzantium) and elsewhere: others say that it originated at fairs in the ingenuity of the itinerant dealers, who thus exerted their wits to draw people and purchasers together; while the rest (without referring to this origin) contend only that it is of pure English growth, and has no connexion with any that we have mentioned, nor even with the Mysteries of Italy or Spain. Schlegel himself is, if we remember correctly, of this last opinion.

Now, we can scarcely suppose that our earlier writers were indebted to the classic Grecian models; for the ‘Mysteries’ have been traced back as far as the twelfth century; and Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, speaks of ‘plays of miracles;’ at which time we are not aware that the Greek dramatists were known in England. But there is a better reason still against this supposed derivation, which is, that the early English performances bear no resemblance whatever to the tragedies of the Greeks. The latter are fine and polished entertainments, discussing matters of daily life, or immortalizing events in their own history; while the former are meagre didactic matters, taken solely from sacred history, and destitute of the chorus which forms so stirring a feature in the character of the Grecian plays. Had our forefathers imitated Sophocles, or Euripides, or Eschylus, it is but fair to suppose that they would have imitated them entirely; for the taste of the nation was not at the point to suggest selections from their style, nor to justify any deviation from their successful system. We must therefore conclude, that the ancient Grecians had little to do (nothing directly) with the birth of our English Drama.

As to the opinion that it began in mimic and buffoonery at fairs, we cannot understand why, if this was the case, the subjects should be of so serious a cast. It is not reasonable to suppose, that the wandering merchants of the time would strive to attract purchasers, by laying before them some signal instance of God's vengeance. If they had mimicked any thing, it would have been the manners or the follies of the time, the gesture or the gait of individuals, or things that were in themselves obviously susceptible of mirth, and readily to be understood by the spectators. But we see nothing of this in the earliest specimens of the English dramatic writers; and without this we cannot well accede to the opinions of Warton or Schlegel, and think that our drama had no connexion with that of foreign countries. In the first place, our English Mysteries were essentially like those of Gregory Nanzianzen and the modern Italians. We had intercourse with Italy and Constantinople; and it is known that the stories of Boccaccio and his countrymen had been brought into England in the time of Chaucer.

If there had not been so decided a resemblance, in point of subject, between the ‘Mysteries’ of England and the sacred Dramas of Italy and modern Greece, we should have felt inclined to adopt the opinion of Schlegel. It is known that the same ingenious discoveries have been made in different parts of the world which had no acquaintance with each other; and it would have been but equitable to have given the English credit for a drama of their own invention. But, to say the truth, the earliest specimens of English plays do not look like inventions; they are at once too complete for originals, and too rude to be considered as copies from the polished Dramas of Sophocles and his cotemporaries. The first attempt at dramatic writing would naturally be in the form of a monodrame, or a simple colloquy, and not a drama with all its principal and subordinate parts illustrating a fact in history. It is said, indeed, that the Mysteries were composed by the monks, for the purpose of supplanting more vulgar entertainments of a similar nature; yet the fact of no such entertainments having come down to us, may well excite some scepticism; for the person capable of inventing a drama, would also, we should think, be able to record it. It is true, that the most ancient entertainment at Naples is Punch, who has descended, by tradition only, from father to son, and still keeps his place of popularity, in defiance both of improvement and innovation. But Punch was not the origin of the Italian Drama; nor would the fact of his having been so, or of his resemblance to our fair mimicry, alter the question as to the invention of the English ‘Mysteries.’ After all, however, the matter is not important, and scarcely worth the very small discussion which we have bestowed upon it.

The ‘Moralities’ which followed, grew out of the old ‘Mystery,’ and were the natural offspring of such a parent. They were mere embodyings of the vices and virtues; and though dressed up after a barbarous fashion, made some approach to the models of the ancient Greeks; at least in the titles of their dramatis personœ. ‘Death,—Kindred,—Strength,—Discretion,’ and others, for instance, which occur in the old Morality of Everyman, came nearer to the personages in the Prometheus of Æschylus than the nature of the ‘Mysteries’ would allow; and in the Morality of Lusty Juventus, the persons of ‘Knowledge,—Good Councell,—Sathan the Devyll,’ and others, explain at once the nature of their offices, and the entertainment they are likely to afford. These compositions (especially the Morality called Hycke-Scorner) possess occasional gleams of dramatic spirit; but, generally speaking, they have little of that quality beyond what is discoverable in the romances and narrative poems of the same period.

The first regular English comedy, Gammer Gurton's Needle, in every sense a very remarkable performance, is said to have been written in the year 1551; and if that statement be correct, the first English tragedy, Ferrex and Porrex, which was the joint composition of Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, and Thomas Norton, was written in the same year. Our business is not now with the comedy. With regard to the latter Drama, it is remarkable rather for its even style and negative merits, than for any one brilliant or sterling quality. It has none of the rudeness of the Dramas which preceded and followed it, but stands by itself, an elegant instance of mediocrity in writing. Without extravagance or flagrant error—without ribaldry, or any of the offensive trash that disgraced those days, it is nevertheless mournfully deficient in spirit and dramatic character. The hue of the authors' minds pervades the whole like a gloom. When Pope praised this tragedy for ‘the propriety of sentiments, and gravity of style,’ &c. ‘so essential to tragedy,’ and which, he says, ‘Shakespeare himself perpetually neglected, or little understood,’ he proves to us nothing but that he did not understand dramatic writing. Even Milton (and we say this very reluctantly) seems to have had an imperfect idea of true tragedy, when he calls the Greek writers ‘unequalled,’ and proposes them as models, in preference to our own great and incomparable poet. We have little to object to the ‘propriety’ of Lord Buchurst's sentiments, and nothing to the ‘gravity’ of his style. These things are very good, no doubt; but we have nothing else. There is no character—no variety, which is the soul of dramatic writing. What Lord Buckhurst says might as well be said in a narrative or didactic poem,—in a sermon, or an essay. But in a play, we want true and vivid portraits: we want the life and spirit of natural dialogue: we want ‘gravity of style’ occasionally, but we also want fancy, and even folly: we want passion in all its shapes, and madness in its many words, and virtue and valour,—not dressed up in allegory, nor tamed down to precept, but true and living examples of each, with all the varieties and inflections of human nature,—not too good for us to profit by, nor too bad for us to dread. Now, we have little of this in Ferrex and Porrex. The play is sterile in character, and, with all its good sense, is a dead and dull monotony. The following is one of the most favourable passages; but it will nevertheless afford a fair specimen of the style in which the whole is written. Hermon (a parasite) is addressing the King.

—If the fear of Gods, and secret grudge
Of Nature's law, repining at the fact,
Withhold your courage from so great attempt,
Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law,
The Gods do bear, and well allow in Kings
The things that they abhor in rascal routes.
When kings on slender quarrels run to wars,
And then, in cruel and unindly wise,
Commend thefts, rapes, murder of innocents,
The spoil of towns, ruins of mighty realms,
Think you such princes do suppose themselves
Subject to laws of kind, and fear of Gods?
Murders and violent thefts in private men
Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach;
Yet no offence, and deck'd with glorious name
Of noble conquests in the hands of kings.

Act 2. sc. 1.

We have taken no liberty with this very edifying counsel, except that of altering the ancient spelling. The doctrine requires as little assistance.

After Lord Sacville followed Edwards, who, in 1571, wrote The Comedy of Damon and Pythias. It has, notwithstanding its title, some things of tragedy in it; but the serious parts are nearly worthless. The style is rude and bad enough, and the play is filled with anachronisms and inconsistencies; but there is an attempt at character in one or two of the persons of the drama, which serves in some small measure to redeem it. Aristippus is an instance of a philosopher turned courtier; and Carisophus is a specimen of the parasite plant, which we can easily suppose flourished and multiplied as readily at the foot of Etna, as on the banks of the Seine or the Thames, or on the shores of the sea of Archangel. About the same time with Edwards lived and wrote Thomas Preston, the author of Cambises king of Percia. This tragedy is remarkable only for its having been referred to, as is supposed, by Shakespeare in Henry the Fourth. The ‘vein’ of Cambises, however, is but a sorry vein; and is more dull than extravagant. It would probably long since have been forgotten, but for Falstaff's allusion. Whetstone, the author of Promos and Cassandra, is scarcely worth a mention, unless it be that Shakespeare has borrowed his subject of Measure for Measure from him;—neither is Kyd, who wrote Soliman and Perseda, and the Spanish Tragedy. We say this on the supposition that some other was the author of the scene in the latter play, where Hieronimo is discovered mad. There is in that scene, indeed, a wild and stern grief, painted with fearful strength, which we must not altogether pass over. The following short extract is powerful and fine.

The Painter enters.
                    Paint. God bless you, Sir.
                    Hier. Wherefore? why, thou scornful villain?
How, where, or by what means should I be blest?
                    Isab. What would'st thou have, good fellow?
                    Paint. Justice, madam.
                    Hier. Oh! ambitious beggar, would'st thou have that
That lives not in the world?
Why, all the undelved mines cannot buy
An ounce of Justice, 'tis a jewel so inestimable.
I tell thee, God hath engrossed all justice in his hands,
And there is none but what comes from him.
                    Paint. Oh! then I see that God must right me for
My murdered son.
                    Hier. How, was thy son murdered?
                    Paint. Ay, Sir: no man did hold a son so dear.
                    Hier. What! not as thine? that's a lic
As massy as the earth: I had a son,
Whose least unvalued hair did weigh
A thousand of thy sons, and he was murdered.
                    Paint. Alas! Sir, I had no more but he.
                    Hier. Nor I, nor I: but this same one of mine
Was worth a legion. But all is one; Pedro,
Jaques, go in a doors, Isabella, go,
And this good fellow here, and I
Will range this hideous orchard up and down
Like too she lions reaved of our young.

Besides these, there are some others who may be said to have flourished before the time of Shakespeare—Wilmot, who wrote Tancred and Gismonde—Greene, the author of James the Fourth—Legge, who is said to have written Richard the Third—the celebrated John Lily the Euphuist—George Peele, who wrote David and Bethsabe and Mahomet and Hiron, and some other dramas,—and last, but not least, Christopher Marlow. These authors, with the exception of Peele and Marlow (for Lily's plays can scarcely be considered within the limit of our subject) may be passed over without further mention. The lines of Peele are sweet and flowing, but they have little imagination and no strength; and he is without a notion of dialogue. He would have written pastorals perhaps smoothly and pleasantly, but the passions were altogether above him. One of his plays, Mahomet and Hiron, is probably the source from which ancient Pistol has derived a portion of his learning. David and Bethsabe reminds us of the Old Mysteries: its style, however, is different, and it has some lines that have undoubtedly great beauty. In Bethsabe's apostrophe to the air, she says—

Deck thyself in loose robes,
And on thy wings bring delicate perfumes—

which is delicacy itself; nor can the following lines in the same play (describing a fountain) be denied the merit of being extremely graceful.

The brim let be embraced with golden curls
Of moss that sleeps with sounds the waters make,
With joy to feed the fount with their recourse:
Let all the grass that beautifies her bower
Bear manna every morn instead of dew;
Or let the dew be sweeter far than that
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill.

But Marlow was undoubtedly the greatest tragic writer that preceded Shakespeare. The spirit of extravagance seems to have dwelt in his brain, and to have imped him on to the most extraordinary feats: but his muse had a fiery wing, and bore him over the dark and unhallowed depths of his subject in a strong and untiring flight. This poet is less remarkable for his insight into human character, than for his rich and gloomy imagination, and his great powers of diction,—for whether stately, or terrible, or tender, he excels in all. His ‘mighty line’ was famous in his own time, and cannot be denied even now: Yet he could stoop from the heights of a lawless fancy, or the dignity of solemn declamation, to words of the softest witchery. He certainly loved to wander from the common track, and dash at once into peril and mystery; and this daring it was which led him naturally to his sublimity and extravagance. Unfortunately Marlow is never content with doing a little, nor even with doing enough; but he fills the cup of horror till it overflows. There is a striking instance of this in his tragedy of Lust's Dominion, which seems written from a desire to throw off a tormenting load of animal spirits. There is a perpetual spurning at restraints, a warring with reason and probability throughout the whole of the play. Eleazar, the Moor, is a mad savage who should have been shut up in a cage, and the queen, his paramour, with him; and the whole dialogue (though there are some strong well-sustained passages) is as unequal and turbulent as the characters.

Of all the plays of Marlow, Faustus is the finest, and Edward the Second perhaps the most equal. The Jew of Malta we cannot admire, (though there is in it certainly the first hint of Shylock); and Tamburlaine, generally speaking, is either fustian or frenzy. However, the poet's idea of the horses of the sun—

                    ‘That blow the morning from their nostrils,’
is magnificent, and his description of Tamburlaine's person
                    ‘(Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear
                    Old Atlas' burden’—)

recals, not unpleasantly, to our mind the description of the great ‘second spirit’ of Milton. Faustus is the story of a learned man who sells himself to the devil, on condition of having unlimited power on earth for twenty-four years; and Mephostophilis (a spirit) is given to him as a slave. These two worthies pass from place to place, enjoying themselves in feastings, and love, and triumphs of various kinds; and, by the aid of Lucifer, they beat priests and abuse the pope to his face, and commit similar enormities in defiance of ‘maledicats’ and other formidable weapons of church construction. There are many single lines and phrases in this play which might be selected as incontestable evidence that Marlow was in felicity of thought, and strength of expression, second only to Shakespeare himself. (As a dramatist, however, he is inferior to others.) Some of his turns of thought are even like those of our matchless poet; as when he speaks of

                                                                                          —unwedded maids
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
Than have the white breasts of the queen of love;

or of a temple

That threats the stars with her aspiring top;

and where he refers to a man who has an amiable soul,

If sin by custom grow not into nature—

and many others. But Faustus's death is the most appalling thing in the play. It is difficult, however, to give the reader an idea of it by a brief extract—he must read it with its ‘pomp and circumstance’ about it. Faustus is to die at twelve, and the clock has already struck eleven. He groans forth his last speech, which begins thus—

O Faustus!
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damned perpetually.
Stand still, you ever moving spheres of Heaven,
That Time may cease, and Midnight never come!
Fair Nature's eye, rise—rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year—a month—a week—a natural day—
That Faustus may repent, and save his soul, &c.

And now, to pass from the terrible to the gentle, nothing can be more soft than the lines which he addresses to the Vision of Helen, whom he requires to pass before him when he is in search of a mistress. He is smitten at once by her excelling beauty, and thus he speaks:

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?—
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss—
Her lips suck forth my soul …
Here will I dwell, for Heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee
Instead of Troy shall Wittenburg be sacked,
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest.
—Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter,
When he appear'd to hapless Semele,
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms,
And none but thou shall be my paramour.—

Following Marlow, but far outshining him and all others in the vigour and variety of his mighty intellect, arose the first of all poets, whether in the East of West—Shakespeare. He had, it is true, many contemporaries, whose names have since become famous,—men who slept for a time in undeserved obscurity, and who are at last brought forward to illustrate the fashion of their time, and to give bright evidence of its just renown: Yet there is not one worthy of being raised to a comparison with Shakespeare himself. One had a lofty fancy, another a deep flow of melodious verse, another a profound reach of thought; a fourth caught well the mere manners of the age, while others would lash its vices or laud its proud deeds, in verse worthy of the acts which they recorded; but Shakespeare surpassed them all. In the race of fame he was foremost, and alone. He was, beyond all doubt or competition, the first writer of his age or nation. He illuminated the land in which he lived, like a constellation. There were, as we have said, other bright aspects which cast a glory upon the world of letters; but he alone had that radiating intellect which extended all ways, and penetrated all things, scattering the darkness of ignorance that rested on his age, while it invigorated its spirit and bettered the heart. He was witty, and humorous, and tender, and lofty, and airy, and profound, beyond all men who have lived before or since. He had that particular and eminent faculty, which no other tragic writer perhaps ever possessed, of divesting his subject altogether of himself. He developed the characters of men, but never intruded himself amongst them. He fashioned figures of all colours and shapes and sizes, but he did not put the stamp of egotism upon them, nor breathe over each the sickly hue of his own opinion. They were fresh and strong, beautiful or grotesque, as occasion asked,—or they were blended and compounded of different metals, to suit the various uses of human life; and thus cast, he sent them forth amongst mankind to take their chance for immortality.

The contemporaries of Shakespeare were great and remarkable men. They had winged imaginations, and made lofty flights. They saw above, below, or around; but they had not the taste or discrimination which he possessed, nor the same extensive vision. They drew correctly and vividly for particular aspects, while he towered above his subject, and surveyed it on all sides, from ‘top to toe.’ If some saw farther than others, they were dazzled at the riches before them, and grasped hastily, and with little care. They were perplexed with that variety which he made subservient to the general effect. They painted a portrait—or two—or three only, as though afraid of confusion. He, on the other hand, managed and marshalled all. His characters lie, like strata of earth, one under another; or to use his own expression, ‘matched in mouth like bells,—each under each.’ We need only look at the plays of Falstaff, where there are wits and rogues and simpletons of a dozen shades,—Falstaff, Hal, Poins, Bardolph, Nym, Pistol, Hostess, Shallow, Silence, Slender,—to say nothing of those rich recruits, equal only to a civil war. Now, no one else has done this, and it must be presumed that none have been able to do it; Marlow, Marston, Webster, Decker, Johnson, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher—a strong phalanx, yet none have proved themselves competent to so difficult a task.

It has been well said, that it is not so much in one faculty that Shakespeare excelled his fellows, as in that wondrous combination of talent, which has made him, beyond controversy, eminent above all. He was as universal as the light, and had riches countless. The Greek dramatists are poor in the comparison. The gloom of Fate hung over their tragedies, and they spoke by the oracle. They have indeed too much of the monotony of their skies; but our poet, while he had the brightness of the summer months, was as various as the April season, and as fickle and fantastic as May.

It is idle to say that the characters of writers cannot be discovered from their works. There is sure to be some betrayal,—(Shakespeare is a wonderful and single exception in his dramatic works—but he has written others)—there is always some mark of vanity, or narrow bigotry, or intolerant pride, when either of these vices darken or contract the poet's heart: there is some moment when he who is querrulous will complain, and he who is misanthropic will pour out his hate; but—passing by the dramas, in which, however, there is no symptom of any personal failings—there is nothing to be found in all his lyrical writings, save only a little repining; and this the malice of his stars may well excuse. The poets and wits of modern times would, we suspect, spurn at the servitude which Shakespeare wore out with patience. But he, rich as he was in active faculty, possessed also the passive virtue of endurance—the Philosophy which enabled him to meet misfortune, and to bear up against the accidents of poverty and of the time. It is to the eternal honour of Lord Southampton, that he could distinguish in some measure the worth of our matchless poet, and that he had generosity enough to honour and reward it. So much has been written and said on Shakespeare, that we will not add further to the enormities of criticism. He breathes like a giant under the loads of rubbish which his pigmy critics and commentators have flung upon him. One good editor, with a reasonable knowledge of the manners and diction of the times, would do the world a service by casting aside nine-tenths of the barren dissertation that has been wasted on the subject, and which now remains, like a caput mortuum, weighing down the better text of our greatest poet.

After Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher have altogether the highest claims to consideration. For, though Ben Jonson was more eminent in some respects, and Massinger better in others, they were, as serious dramatic poets, decidedly superior to both. It is difficult to separate Beaumont from Fletcher; especially as all the plays wherein the former had a share are not certainly known. Beaumont is said to have had the better judgment (to have ‘brought the ballast of judgment,’) and Fletcher the livelier and more prolific fancy; but as the latter was the sole author of The Faithful Shepherdess, Valentinian, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, [‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ is said to have been written by Fletcher and Shakespeare; and the early part of the play certainly betrays marks of the great master hand, or else an imitation so exquisite, as to cause our regret that it was not more frequently attempted.] besides being concerned jointly with Beaumont in some of the most serious plays which pass under their joint names, he is entitled on the whole to the greatest share of our admiration. An excellent critic has said of Fletcher, that he was ‘mistrustful of nature.’ We think rather that he was careless of her. He lets his Muse run riot too often. There is no symptom of timidity about him, (if that be meant:) he never stands on the verge of a deep thought, curbing his wit for propriety’s sake. On the contrary, he seems often not to know where to stop. Hence it is that his style becomes dilated, and has sometimes an appearance of effeminacy.

If we may believe the portraits of Fletcher, there was something flushed and sanguine in his personal complexion. His eye had a fiery and eager look; his hair inclined to red; and his whole appearance is restless, and, without being heavy, is plethoric. And his verse is like himself. It is flushed and full of animal spirit. It has as much of this as Marlow's had; but there is not the same extravagance, and scarcely the same power which is to be found in the verse of the elder dramatist Fletcher, however, had a great deal of humour, and a great deal of sprightliness. There is a buoyancy in his language that is never perceptible in Massinger, nor even in the shrewder scenes of Ben Jonson;—but he had not a wit like Shakespeare, nor a tithe of his ethereal fancy. There is always something worldly in Fletcher, and the other poets of his time, which interferes with their airiest abstractions, and drags down the wings of their Muse. We see it in the Witch of Middleton, in the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher and others; whereas we do not feel it in The Tempest, nor in Macbeth, disturbing our delusion; and Oberon and Titania and her crew, even when they mix with the ‘rude mechanicals,’

‘Who work for bread upon Athenian stalls,’

remain to us a golden dream. They meet by moonlight upon the haunted shores of Athens, to make sport with human creatures, to discuss their tiny jealousies, to submit even to the thraldom of an earthly passion; but they still keep up their elfin state, from first to last, unsoiled by any touch of mortality.

Before we part with Fletcher, we will give the reader a passage from his tragedy of Philaster, that will illustrate, more than any thing we can say, both his merits and defects. Bellario (a girl in disguise) addresses the King of Sicily, on behalf of his daughter (Arethusa), who has just been married clandestinely to Philaster. The young couple come in as masquers; and thus the boy-girl intercedes:—

Right royal Sir, I should
Sing you an epithalamium of these lovers,
But having lost my best airs with my fortunes,
And wanting a celestial harp to strike
This blessed union on, thus in glad story
I give you all. These two fair cedar branches,
The noblest of the mountain, where they grew
Straitest and tallest, under whose still shades
The worthier beasts have made their layers, and slept
Free from the Sirian star, and the fell thunder-storke,
Free from the clouds, when they were big with humour,
And delivered
In thousand spouts their issues to the earth;—
Oh! there was none but silent Quiet there;
Till never-pleased Fortune shot up shrubs,
Base under-brambles to divorce these branches;
And for a while they did so:—
And now a gentle gale hath blown again,
And made these branches meet and twine together,
Never to be divided.—The God, that sings
His holy numbers over marriage beds,
Hath knit their noble hearts, and here they stand
Your children, mighty king; and I have done.'

With regard to Massinger, there can be no doubt, we think, that he was decidedly inferior to Fletcher as a poet; but that he was a more equal writer is very possible, and he had perhaps as great a share of the mere dramatic faculty. His verse has been celebrated for its flow, we believe, by Dr Ferriar; but we cannot, we confess, perceive much beauty in it. It is not rugged and harsh, but it wants music nevertheless; it runs in a tolerably regular current, but it has seldom or never any felicitous modulations. Massinger himself has not much of the fluctation of genius. We would not be understood to say that carelessness is the necessary concomitant of talent; but merely that Massinger rarely rises much beyond the level on which he sets out. He is less accessible to passion than Fletcher and others, and is not often either very elevated or very profound. His imagination does not soar, like Marlow's, nor penetrate like the dark subtle power of Webster. He has strength, however, and sometimes great majesty of diction. He builds up a character to a stately height, although he does not often endow it with the turns and vacillations of humanity. Sforza is the best which occurs to us at this moment, and is in some measure an exception to our opinion. We do not see any thing improbable in his conduct, more than is justified by the irregularities of human nature. His wild admiration and fierce injunctions are sufficiently consistent; and the way in which he rises upon us, from being the slave of a woman's beauty to the height of a hero and philosopher, has always attracted our deep regard. His return, and his remorse too, are all in character; and though Massinger's forte is by no means the pathetic, the death of Sforza is full of pathos.

He sighs forth his breath thus—
Yet I will not die raging; for, alas!
My whole life was a frenzy.—
Bury me with Marcelia,
And let our epitaphs be—

[A]nd here death cuts short his saying; but the unfinished accents are more touching than the most elaborate and highly strained completion.

We think of Ben Jonson, almost as a matter of course, when we name Beaumont and Fletcher and Massinger. He was not equal to his companions in tragedy; but he was superior to them, and perhaps to almost all others, in his terse, shrewd, sterling, vigorous, comic scenes. He had a faculty between wit and humour (but more nearly allied to the latter), which has not been surpassed. His strokes were sometimes as subtle as Shakespeare's, but his arrowy wit was not feathered. His humour was scarcely so broad and obvious as Fletcher's, but it was more searching, and equally true. His tragedies were inferior to his comedies. He had a learned eye, and set down good things from the book; but he relies upon facts (if we may so speak) instead of Nature, and they do not provide for all the dilemmas to which his heroes are reduced.

Of Middleton it may be said, that he had a high imagination, and was an observer of manners and character; and that his verse was rich, being studded with figures and bright conceits. His play of the Witch is supposed by Stevens to have preceded Macbeth; and, if so, there can be no doubt but that Shakespeare made use of it. The relative merits of his witches, and those of Shakespeare, have already been decided by Mr Charles Lamb to our satisfaction. As a play, we prefer, on the whole, our author's Women Beware of Women. Leontio's speech, when he is returning home to his young wife, is a fine compliment to marriage.

Marston was more of a satirist than a dramatic writer. He was harsh in his style, and cynical and sceptical in his ideas of human nature. Nevertheless he was a deep and bold thinker; and he might have filled the office of a court jester, with all the privileges of a motley, for he could whip a folly well. He held up the mirror to vice, but seldom or never to virtue. He had little imagination, and less dilatation, but brings his ideas at once to a point. A fool or a braggart he could paint well, or a bitter wit; but he does little else; for his villains are smeared over, and his good people have no marks of distinction upon them. Yet there are a few touches of strange pathos in the midst of his satire; but they arise from the depth of the sentiment, rather than from the situation of things, or from any strength of passion in the speaker, either of love or pity or despair. Marston appears to us like a man who, having outlived the hopes of a turbulent youth, has learned nothing but that evil is a great principle of human nature, and mingles sparingly the tenderness of past recollections with the bitter consciousness of existing ill.

Decker had a better notion of character than most of his contemporaries; but he had not the poignancy of Marston, and scarcely the imagination of Middleton, and fell short of the extravagant power and towering style of Marlow. Perhaps, however, he had more of the qualities of a good dramatist than either. He understood the vacillations of the human mind. His men and women did not march to the end of the drama without turning to the right or to the left; but they gave themselves up to nature and their passions, and let us pleasantly into some of the secrets and inconsistencies of the actual world. His portraits of Mattheo and Bellafront (particularly the former), of Friscobaldo and Hypolito, are admirable. He is almost the only writer (even in his great time) who permits circumstances to have their full effect upon persons, and to turn them from the path on which they set out. He did not torture facts to suit a preconceived character; but varied the character according to events. He knew that to be inconsistent, and to change, was natural to man (and woman), and acted accordingly. As a specimen of the style of Decker, the reader may take the following extract. The Duke (of Milan) and his Doctor and servants are waiting for the revival of Infelicia, who has been thrown, by opiates, into a sleep.

                    Duke. Uncurtain her.
Softly, sweet doctor … You called
For music, did you not? Oh, ho! it speaks,
It speaks. Watch, sirs, her waking; note those sands,
Doctor, sit down. A dukedom that should weigh
Mine own twice down, being put into one scale,
And that fond desperate boy Hypolito
Making the weight up, should not (at my hands)
Buy her i' the other, were her state more light
Than her's who makes a dowry up with alms.
Doctor,—I'll starve her on the Appenine,
Ere he shall marry her. I must confess
Hypolito is nobly born; a man,
Did not mine enemy's blood boil in his veins.
                    Servant. She wakes, my lord.
                    Duke. Look, Doctor Benedict.
I charge ye, on your lives, maintain for truth
Whate'er the Doctor or myself aver.
                    Infel. Oh! God,—what fearful dreams!
                    Servant. Lady!
                    Infel. Ha!
                    Duke. Girl!
Why, Infelicia!—how is't now? ha,—speak!
                    Infel. I'm well. What makes this doctor here?—I'm well.
                    Duke. Thou wert not so, e'en now. Sickness' pale hand
Laid hold on thee, e'en in the dead of feasting;
And when a cup, crowned with thy lover's health,
Had touched thy lips, a sensible cold dew
Stood on thy cheeks, as if that Death had wept
To see such beauty altered.

Chapman (the translator of Homer) was a grave and solid writer; but he did not possess much skill in tragedy, and, in his dramas at least, did not show the same poetic power as some of his rivals. Nevertheless he was a fine pedant, a stately builder of verse. In his best-known tragedy (Bussy D'Ambois), his hero will receive no human help, when dying; but says—

Prop me, true sword, as thou hast ever done.
The equal thought I bear of life and death,
Shall make me faint on no side: I am up
Here like a Roman statue: I will stand
Till Death hath made me marble. Oh! my fame,
Live, in despite of murder. Take thy wings,
And haste thee where the grey-eyed morn perfumes
Her rosy chariot with Sabæan spices.
Fly, where the Evening, from Iberian vales,
Takes on her swarthy shoulders Hecaté
Crown'd with a grove of oaks.
And tell them all that D'Ambois now is hasting
To the eternal dwellers.

Webster was altogether of a different stamp. He was an unequal writer; full of a gloomy power, but with touches of profound sentiment and the deepest pathos. His imagination rioted upon the grave, and frenzy and murder and ‘loathed melancholy’ were in his dreams. A common calamity was beneath him, and ordinary vengeance was too trivial for his Muse. His pen distilled blood; and he was familiar with the hospital and the charnel-house, and racked his brain to outvie the horrors of both. His visions were not of Heaven, nor of the air; but they came, dusky and earthy, from the tomb; and the madhouse emptied its cells to do justice to the closing of his fearful stories. There are few passages, except in Shakespeare, which have so deep a sentiment as the following. Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, has caused his sister (the Duchess of Malfy) to be murdered by Bosola, his creature. They are standing by the dead body.

                    Bosol. Fix your eye here.
                    Fer. Constantly.
                    Bosol. Do you not weep?—
Other sins only speak: Murther cries out:
The element of water moistens the earth;
But blood flies upwards, and bedews the heavens.
                    Fer. Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle. She died young!
                    Bosol. I think not so: her infelicity
Seemed to have years too many.
                    Fer. She and I were twins:
And should I die this instant, I had lived
Her time to a minute.

We would not be supposed to assert that this writer was without his faults. On the contrary, he had several:—he had a too gloomy brain, a distempered taste; he was sometimes harsh, and sometimes dull; but he had great sentiment, and, not unfrequently, great vigour of expression. He was like Marlow, with this difference—that as Marlow's imagination was soaring, so, on the other hand, was his penetrating and profound. The one rose to the stars, the other plunged to the centre; equally distant from the bare commonplaces of the earth; they sought for thoughts and images in clouds and depths, and arrived, by different means, at the same great end. Rowley and Field are respectable names of this period; but, as they generally wrote in conjunction with others, we will not attempt to give them an independent reputation. We must not forget, however, that the former was the author of The Witch of Edmonton, and bore for some time the credit of The Parliament of Love.

Ford is sufficiently peculiar in his talent as well as his style, to call for a separate mention. His principal play, of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, betrays great powers of pathos, and much sweetness of versification; but they should not have been wasted on such a subject. We are not persons to put the Tragic Muse in fetters, nor to imprison her within very circumscribed limits; but there are subjects (be they fact or fiction) which are nauseous to all except distempered minds. There can be no good gained by running counter to the tastes and opinions of all society. There is no truth elicited, no moral enforced; and the boundaries of human knowledge can scarcely be said to be enlarged by anatomizing monstrous deformities, or expatiating upon the hideous anomalies of the species. Ford has not much strength or knowledge of character; nor has he much depth of sentiment, except in pourtraying the passion of love. In that, however, he excels almost all his contemporaries. He is remarkable, also, for his pathetic powers; yet scarcely for poetry, although his verse is generally sweet and tender. Some parts of The Broken Heart are as finely written as Fletcher, and Penthea herself (the true heroine, after all—a pale passion-flower) exquisitely drawn. The scene, however, in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, where Giovanni murders Annabella, is the finest thing that Ford has done; and there he will stand a comparison with any one, except Shakespeare himself. Tourneur was the author of one or two tragedies of exceeding merit. He belonged to the age of Fletcher, and Jonson, and Decker, and was worthy of it: but his faculty, though excellent in itself, had not such a peculiar cast as to call for a separate mention. He deserved more, however, than the couplet with which one of his contemporaries has libelled his memory.

His fame unto that pitch was only raised,
As not to be despised, nor over-praised.

The ‘Revenger's,’ and ‘Atheist's Tragedies,’ should have saved him from this.

Shirley was a writer of about the same calibre as Ford, but with less pathos. And he was, moreover, the last of that bright line of poets whose glory has run thus far into the future, and must last as long as passion, and profound thought, and fancy, and imagination, and wit, shall continue to be honoured. There may be a change of fashions, and revolutions of power; but the empire of intellect will always remain the same. There is a lofty stability in genius, a splendour in a learned renown, which no clouds can obscure or extinguish. The politician and his victories may pass away, and the discoveries in science be eclipsed; but the search of the poet and the philosopher is for immutable Truth, and their fame will be, like their object, immortal.

We have now done with the ancients. We have endeavoured to trace, as well as we could, their individual likenesses: but they had also a general character which belonged to their age,—a pervading resemblance, in which their own peculiar distinctions were merged and lost. They were true English writers, unlatinized. They were not translators of French idioms, nor borrowers (without acknowledgment) of Roman thoughts. Their minds were not of exotic growth, nor their labours fashioned after a foreign model. Yet they were indebted to story and fable,—to science and art—and they had a tincture of learning; but it was mixed with the bloom of fresh inspiration, and subdued to the purposes of original poetry. It was not the staple, the commodity upon which these writers traded; but was blended, gracefully and usefully, with their own home-bred diction and original thought.

During the protectorate of Cromwell, the Drama lay in a state of torpidity. Whatever intellect the time possessed, was exhausted in tirades and discussions, religious and political, where cunning and violence, and narrow bigotry, alternately predominated. The gloom of an ignorant fanaticism lay heavy on the state, and oppressed it; and humour and fancy were put to flight, or sought shelter with the wandering cavaliers of the period. The spirit of the people was bent to arms. They fought for liberty or the crowned cause, as interest or opinion swayed them, while literature suffered in the contest. Milton, the greatest name of that age, was the grandest of the poets, but he had strictly no dramatic faculty. He himself speaks throughout the whole of Samson Agonistes,—throughout all Paradise Lost,—all Comus. His own great spirit shone through the story, whatever it might be; and whatever the character, his own arguments and his own opinions were brought out and arranged in lucid order. His talent was essentially epic, not dramatic; and it was because the former prevailed, and not the latter, that we are indebted for the greatest poem that the world has ever seen.

After the restoration of the second Charles, the Drama raised its head, but evidently with little of its former character. It had lost its old inspiration, caught directly from the bright smile of Nature. It had none of that fine audacity which prompted the utterance of so many truths; none of that proud imagination which carried the poet's thoughts to so high a station. But it drew in a noisy, and meagre, and monotonous stream of verse, through artificial conduits and French strainers, which fevered and fretted for a time, but, in the end, impoverished and reduced the strength and stature of the English Drama.

Dryden is the principal name of this period, and he was foremost to overturn the system of his forefathers and substitute the French style in its stead. He vaunts, if we remember rightly, in one of his prefaces, of adding new words to our native tongue; and he certainly injured (as well as served) the cause of literature, by sanctioning by his example the prevalent taste of his time. The Restoration, perhaps, cherished and brought to life that bright phalanx of wits, Wycherley, and Congreve, and the rest; but it threw our graver dramatists into the shade. Comedy flourished, but Tragedy died; or, rather, it grew diseased, and bloated, and unnatural, and lost its strength and healthier look. It grew unwieldy, imitative, foreign. The French had studied and copied the Greek drama, and the English studied and copied the French. All fashions came at that time from Paris, and literature was not an exception. Corneille first, and afterwards Racine, who was cotemporary with Dryden, lent their help to put our native dramatists out of the play. In fact, our playwrights found it much easier to imitate the French authors successfully, than to rival their predecessors in England. To this, as well as to the force of fashion, which undoubtedly operated very strongly, may be ascribed the change in our dramatic literature. The declamatory plays of Dryden and the others do not contain a tithe of the original thought that was lavished upon many of the second-rate dramas of the Elizabethan age. The tone of tragedy itself became cold and bombastic, where it was once full of life and simplicity, and the sentiments degenerated with the style. They were heavy and commonplace, or else were pilfered from the elder writers without acknowledgment, and dressed up in gaudy and fantastic habits to suit the poor purposes of a play-mechanic. It is now well known that Rowe stole the entire plot and characters of his Fair Penitent from Massinger; but it is not so generally known that his production is contemptible in comparison with the original play.

Dryden was a striking and nervous writer. As a satirist, he has scarcely been equalled. As a dramatist, he had great command of language, and was full of high-sounding phrases; but these he showered indiscriminately upon all his characters, whatever their worth or occupation might be. The courtier, the tyrant, the victim, the slave, the cynic, were equally well provided with gorgeous words, and lavished them away alike upon all occasions. Dryden seems to have had a quick insight into one quarter of men's minds, and drew out their foibles and darker traits with the hand of a master; but he could not pourtray a whole character, the good and the ill, and those proper shades of the intellect, those turns and touches of passion, which have made Shakespeare immortal. On the contrary, he had an obliquity of understanding which led him to the discovery of error only. His intellectual retina seems to have been too small to receive the whole compass and sketch of man. If he praised, he praised in general, with little discrimination; and his writings have none of the nicer touches of affection or goodness. But, with the lash in his hand, and a knave or a fool to deal with, he was an exemplary person. No culprit could stand against him.

Of all the dramatic writers since the return of Charles, Lee may be considered as the first. It is true, that Otway has constructed the best drama, and the stage is most indebted to him; but Lee had assuredly more imagination and passion than his rival, although every play which he has written is disgraced by the most unaccountable fustian. There is great tenderness and beauty in Theodosius; and great power, mixed with extravagance, both in The Rival Queens and The Massacre of Paris, and others. This last-mentioned play, which is not, we apprehend, very generally known, shows a skill in character equal to Otway, to whom Lee is commonly decidedly inferior in that respect. As a specimen of the spirit of Lee's dialogue, the reader may take the following from The Massacre of Paris. The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorrain are speaking of Marguerite (de Valois), who has just left them in a transport of passion.

                                                            Car. What have you done, my lord, to make her thus?
                    Guise. Causes are endless for a woman's loving.
Perhaps she has seen me break a lanc on horseback;
Or, as my custom is, all over armed
Plunge in the Seine or Loire; and, where 'tis swiftest,
Plow to my point against the headlong stream.
'Tis certain, were my soul of that soft make
Which some believe, she has charms, my heavenly uncle,' &c.

which he proceeds to discuss in a way to call down the rebuke of the Cardinal upon his amour,

Not for the sin; that's as the conscience makes it,

as his Eminence says, but for the ‘love.’ To this Guise replies:

          Guise. I love, 'tis true, but most for my ambition:
Therefore I thought to marry Marguerite.
But, oh! that Cassiopeia in the Chair,
The regent-mother, and that dog Anjou,
Cross constellations! blast my plots ere born.
The king, too, frowns upon me; for, last night,
Hearing a ball was promised by the queen,
I came to help the show; when, at the door,
The king, who stood himself the sentry, stopped me,
And asked me what I came for? I replied,
To serve his majesty: he, sharp and short,
Retorted thus—he did not need my service.
          Car. 'Tis plain, you must resolve to quit her;
For I am charged to tell you, she's designed
To be the wife of Henry of Navarre.
'Tis the main beam in all that mighty engine
Which now begins to move—
          Guise. I have it, and methinks it looks like D'Alva.
I see the very motion of his beard,
His opening nostrils, and his dropping lids;
I hear him croak, too, to the king and queen:
“In Biscay's bay,—at Bayonne
Fish for the great fish;—take no care for frogs;—
Cut off the poppy heads;—lay the winds fast,
And strait the waves (the people) will be still.”

Otway, however, on the whole, seems to have shown in his great tragedy (Venice Preserved) more dramatic power than Lee; for although there is a good deal of commonplace in it, and more than enough of prose, that tragedy is certainly entitled to rank very high as a dramatic production. Otway's pretensions to mere poetry were very slight; and his lyrical pieces are entirely worthless. What he effected, he did by a strong contrast of character, by spirited dialogue, and by always keeping in view the main object of the play. He did not dally with his subject, nor waste his strength in figures and conceits, but went straight to the end, and kept expectation alive. It must be confessed, however, that Jaffier and Belvidera are sometimes sufficiently tedious: But Pierre is a bold and striking figure, who stands out, like a rock, from the sea of sorrow which is poured around him. He is in fact the hero of the play, and like a pleasant discord in music, saves it from the monotony which would otherwise oppress it.

Southern is less tumid than Lee and Dryden, and altogether more free from blemish, but he is a weaker writer than either. His Isabella possesses great pathos, and his dialogue is for the most part natural; but he has little else to boast of. Congreve was a wit of the first water, and the most sparkling comic writer perhaps in the circle of letters; and yet he wrote The Mourning Bride. We think that, with his wit, he could not have been insensible to its defects. Of Rowe, Hughes, Hill, Howard, Murphey, Thomson, Cumberland, &c. what can we say, but that they all wrote tragedies, which succeeded—we believe. Addison's Cato is as cold as a statue, and correct enough to satisfy the most fastidious of critics. We ourselves prefer his Sir Roger de Coverley: But these things are matters of taste. With regard to Dr Johnson's Irene, we must say that it would reflect little or no credit upon any writer whatever; and that it detracts from, rather than adds to, his deservedly great reputation, is, we apprehend, universally allowed. The author, we believe, once adventured an opinion, that nothing which had deserved to live was forgotten. We wonder whether, if he were alive, he would (in the present state of his play) retain his old way of thinking. These general maxims are dreadfully perilous to poets' reputations, and should not be proclaimed but with due deliberation.

Moore and Lillo were writers of domestic tragedy, and, with the exception perhaps of Heyword and Rowley, and we may add Southern, bear little resemblance to any of their predecessors. Their's was a muse born without wings, but nursed amidst sin and misfortune, and fed with tears. They neither attempted to soar, nor to penetrate below the surface, but contented themselves with common calamities, every-day sorrows. Their plays are, like the Newgate Calendar, or a Coroner's inquisition, true, but unpleasant. They give us an account of Mr Beverley, who poisoned himself but the other day, after his losses at hazard or rouge et noir; or they admit us into the condemned cell of a city apprentice, who has robbed his master. Their characters have all a London look; they frequent the city clubs, and breathe the air of traffic. These writers are as good as a newspaper—and no better. But Tragedy was surely meant for other and higher things than to bring the gallows (even with its moral) upon the stage, or to reduce to dialogue the Coroner's inquisition, or police reports. As in a picture, it is not always the truest imitator of nature who is the best painter; for an artist may make an unexceptionable map of the human face, and set down the features and furrows truly, and yet be unable to produce a grand work:—So is the minute detail of facts, however melancholy, insufficient in itself for the purposes of good tragedy. The Muse's object is not to shock and terrify, or to show what may be better seen at the scaffold or in the hospital; but it is to please as well as move us, to elevate as well as to instruct.

Of the Dramas of the present day, we have already spoken in a former Number; and we will not advert to them again: But will proceed, without more ado, to say a word on the merits of the two pieces which stand at the head of this article.

The authors of these plays may serve to illustrate the two qualities necessary to the construction of a good play. Mr Knowles, we apprehend, has the most dramatic—and Mr Beddoes (he is a minor, too, it seems!) the most poetical power. The poetry of the first seems to spring rather from passion, or to be struck out by the collision of events, than to be a positive and independent faculty. The language of Mr Beddoes, on the other hand, is essentially poetical. It is airy, fanciful, imaginative, and sometimes beautiful. His thoughts lie deeper, too, perhaps, than those scattered over Mr Knowles's verse; but his language is scarcely so real, and his scenes are less dexterously fashioned. In the Brides' Tragedy, there is a succession of delightful interviews; but in Mr Knowles's Virginius, there are groups; not merely dialogues between two persons, but family pictures, domestic stories, carrying a deep interest, the bustle of the forum, the lictor and his train, and the Roman father with his cluster of friends. The author, too, has contrived to excite the strong attention of the reader, and to keep it up to the end of Virginius's story. It is but fair, however, to observe, that the intentions of one of our authors were directed principally to the stage; and the ambition of the other confined to the closet. Accordingly, in what they have aimed at, they have each, to a very considerable degree, succeeded. Indeed, the drama of Mr Beddoes betrays more promise (we ought to say, perhaps, more power) than that of almost any young poet, whose works have been before us for the first time. He does not graps his subject perhaps, nor subdue his scenes sufficiently to the end and purpose of his play; but he strews flowers in our path, and sets up bright images for our admiration, which may well serve to beguile us as we go, and to soften the austerities of criticism. Mr Knowles's play has, we are told, succeeded eminently on the stage, and with this he is probably satisfied. We may be allowed to say, that we think that it merited its success.

In order to give the reader a tolerable idea of Mr Knowles's style, we shall select a passage from one of his earlier scenes. It is the old story of the love of Icilius and Virginia, but it seems to us to be very delicately managed. Virginia is alone, having been left by her father and Dentatus, who have been talking upon the subject of her lover. The young persons, it is to be observed, are not yet acquainted with each other's regard.

                                        Virginia. I never told it yet;
But take of me, thou gentle air, the secret—
And ever after breather more balmy sweet.
I love Icilius!—Yes, although to thee
I fear to tell it, that hast neither eye
To scan my looks, nor voice to echo me,
Nor e'en an o'er apt ear to catch my words:
Yet, sweet invisible confidant, my secret
Once being thine,—I tell thee, and I tell thee
Again—and yet again—I love Icilius!
Icilius (entering).
          Icilius. Virginia!—sweet Virginia!—Sure I heard
My name pronounced. Was it by thee, Virginia?
Thou dost not answer—then it was by thee—
Oh! would'st thou tell me why thou named'st Icilius!
                    Virginia. My father is incensed with thee. Dentatus
Has told him of the new Decemvirate,
How they abuse their office. You, he knows,
Have favoured their election, and he fears
May have some understanding of their plans.
                    Icilius. He wrongs me then.
                    Virginia. I thank the Gods.
                    Icilius. For me?
Virginia?—Do you thank the Gods for me?
Your eye is moist—yet that may be for pity.
Your hand doth tremble—that may be for fear.
Your cheek is covered o'er with blushes. What—
Oh! what can that be for?
                    Virginia. Icilius, leave me.
                    Icilius. Leave thee, Virginia? Oh! a word—a word
Trembles upon my tongue, which, if it match
The thought that moves thee now, and thou wilt let me
Pronounce that word, to speak that thought for me,
I'll breathe—
                    Virginia. Icilius, will you leave me?
                              Icilius. Love! love! Virginia. Love!—If I have spoke
Thy thought aright, ne'er be it said again—
The heart requires more service than the tongue
Can, at its best, perform. Virginia!
Virginia, speak—(Virginia covers her face with her hands.)
Oh! I have loved thee long:
So much the more ecstatic my delight,
To find thee mine at length.
                    Virginia. My secret's yours.
Keep it, and honour it, Icilius.

pp. 19, 20.

Besides this, and besides the general good texture of the first four acts of the play, and the graceful scenes which it has, there are occasional specimens of very spirited dialogue; and the whole is as free from artifice as a play can well be. Here is an instance. It is, when Icilius, still ‘harping on his daughter,’ is checked by Virginius, who tells him that it is a time of war. The lover pleads, and the father softens.

                    Virginius. Well, well; I only meant to put it off:
We'll have the revel yet. The board shall smoke.
The cup shall sparkle, and the jest shall soar
And mock us from the roof. Will that content you?
Not’till the war be done, tho’—Yet, ere then,
Some tongue that now needs only wag, to make
The table ring, may have a tale to tell, &c.

This, once or twice, nearly degenerates, into the excess of the familiar. But Virginius's exclamation, in his insanity, when he is watching for the coming of his daughter—(she is dead)—is at once poetical and beautiful. He inquires, ‘Will she not come?’—and adds,

                    —She will not dare—Oh! when
Did my Virginia dare—Virginia!
Is it a voice (or nothing) answers me?
I hear a sound so fine—there's nothing lives
'Twixt it and silence.

We have not troubled our readers with the particulars of Mr Knowles's tragedy. The story of Virginius saved (by death) from the lust and tyranny of Appius, is known to every one.

Mr Beddoes' play is founded on the fact of a manciple of one of the colleges havfing murdered a young girl whom he had privately married, in order to shield himself from the anger of his father, and to make way for a second marriage.

The following will show the way in which Mr Beddoes manages a subject that poets have almost reduced to commonplace. We thought all similes for the violet had been used up; but he gives us a new one, and one that is very delightful. Hesperus and Floribel (the young wedded lovers) are in a garden; and the husband speaks—

                              Hesperus.—See, here's a bower
Of eglantine with honeysuckles woven,
Where not a spark of prying light creeps in,
So closely do the sweets enfold each other.
'Tis Twilight's home; come in, my gentle love,
And talk to me. So! I've a rival here;
What's this that sleeps so sweetly on your neck?
                    Floribel. Jealous so soon, my Hesperus? Look then,
It is a bunch of flowers I pulled for you:
Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye,
When first it darkened with immortal life.
                    Hesperus. Sweet as thy lips. Fie on those taper fingers,
Have they been brushing the long grass aside
To drag the daisie from its hiding-place,
Where it shuns light, the Danäe of flowers,
With gold up-hoarded on its virgin-lap?
                    Floribel. And here's a treasure that I found by chance,
A lily of the valley; low it lay
Over a mossy mound, withered and weeping,
As on a fairy's grave.
                    Hesperus. Of all the posy
Give me the rose, though there's a tale of blood
Soiling its name. In elfin annals old
'Tis writ, how Zephyr, envious of his love,
(The love he bare to Summer, who since then
Has weeping visited the world); once found
The baby Perfume cradled in a violet;
('Twas said the beauteous bantling was the child
Of a gay bee, that in his wantonness
Toyed with a peabud in a lady's garland);
The felon winds, confederate with him,
Bound the sweet slumberer with golden chains,
Pulled from the wreathed laburnum, and together
Deep cast him in the bosom of a rose,
And fed the fettered wretch with dew and air.

pp. 4, 5.

And there is an expression in the same scene, (where the author is speaking of sleepers' fancies, &c.)

While that wing'd song, the restless nightingale
Turns her sad heart to music—

which is perfectly beautiful.

The reader may now take a passage from the scene where Hesperus murders the girl Floribel. She is waiting for him in the Divinity path, alone, and is terrified. At last he comes; and she sighs out

                                                  —Speak! let me hear thy voice,
Tell me the joyful news!

and thus he answers—

Aye, I am come
In all my solemn pomp, Darkness and Fear,
And the great Tempest in his midnight car,
The sword of lightning girt across his thigh,
And the whole dæmon brood of night, blind Fog
And withering Blight, all these are my retainers;
How: not one smile for all this bravery?
What think you of my minstrels, the hoarse winds,
Thunder, and tuneful Discord? Hark, they play.
Well piped, methinks; somewhat too rough, perhaps.
                    Flo. I know you practise on my silliness,
Else I might well be scared. But leave this mirth,
Or I must weep.
                    Hes.          'Twill serve to fill the goblets
For our carousal, but we loiter here,
The bridemaids are without; well-picked thou'lt say,
Wan ghosts of woe-begone, self slaughtered damsels
In their best winding-sheets; start not, I bid them wipe
Their gory bosoms; they'll look wondrous comely;
Our link-boy, Will o' the Wisp, is waiting too
To light us to our grave.'

pp. 67, 68.

After some further speech she asks him what he means; and he replies—

               What mean I?               Death and murder,
Darkness and misery.               To thy prayers and shrift;
Earth gives thee back.               Thy God hath sent me for thee,
Repent and die.

She returns gentle answers to him; but in the end he kills her, and afterwards mourns thus over her body—

Dead art thou, Florible; fair, painted earth,
And no warm breath shall ever more disport
Between those ruby lips: no, they have quaffed
Life to the dregs, and found death at the bottom,
The sugar of the draught. All cold and still;
Her very tresses stiffen in the air.
Look, what a face: had our first mother worn
But half such beauty, when the serpent came,
His heart, all malice, would have turned to love;
No hand but this, which I do think was once
Cain, the arch-murtherer's, could have acted it.
And I must hide these sweets, not in my bosom;
In the foul earth. She shudders at my grasp;
Just so she laid her head across my bosom
When first—oh villain! which way lies the grave? [Exit.

We had intended to have said something upon the occasionally bad structure of Mr Knowles's verse, and on the way in which Mr Beddoes loiters, when he should carry his readers onwards; as well as on both plays being defective towards the conclusion; but this article has already run to so great a length, that we must take an opportunity of acting upon our intentions hereafter.